by Lia Weston
I don’t know myself, so I have no comeback to this.
‘I mean, it’s a very weird move for someone who’s so sensitive to other people.’
‘Maybe I’m not, though.’ This thought stuck pins into me all night, keeping me out of sleep. I am a robot. I have no feelings. I am an animated bag of sausage meat. This morning, however, the guilt started to kick in, along with memories of the finer details. The puddle of spilt wine like a bloodstain. The brief sympathetic cling in Parker’s hug. And, far worse, the microflash of fear on June’s face just after the shock registered.
‘Fair point, I’ll rephrase,’ says Mica. ‘You are usually sensitive to other people. Look at your work. Look at the kinds of things you know about people, the things they don’t say. It’s like telepathy. I can’t do that. Tarik can’t do that.’
I roll my head to see if she’s being sarcastic. Her face is faint in the gloom. All I can see is her lips. Mica has very nice lips, though I’d never tell her. Kain once joked she had a rack you could rest a beer on and was lucky to escape from the basement with his head still attached.
‘June deserves better,’ I say. ‘She should be with someone who likes wine tours and wants to take Thai cooking classes or whatever it was she kept suggesting.’
‘Rather than someone who bins her in front of a hundred strangers.’
I groan into the crook of my elbow. ‘You’re not helping.’
‘I’m not supposed to be helping. The only way you could have made it worse would have been to stab her with a steak knife and add her as a new installation.’ Her voice echoes into the bottom of her glass.
‘If it makes you feel better, I had to climb on the dumpster in the car park and break in through my balcony. I cut myself on the window.’ I hold up a bandaged finger.
‘Serves you right.’
‘You don’t even like June.’
It’s more accurate to say June doesn’t like Mica. Mica, in turn, tends to tolerate June with the air of someone making small talk in a waiting room.
‘Regardless of whether or not I think she’s as interesting as a bucket of flour, right now I’m on her side. No one deserves to have something like that happen in front of other people, let alone at a public event. Let alone,’ she waves her glass for emphasis, ‘in a place that meant she had to get a lift home with her suddenly ex-boyfriend’s parents. I mean, for fuck’s sake.’
The barman puts another beer on the counter next to my head and picks out the money from the small pile in front of me. Mica and the barman sometimes have a thing. She never goes into the details, but she can say with confidence that he is tattooed all over.
The Grace does not serve cocktails or have happy hour or pokies. These factors automatically eliminate several types of drinkers, so its atmosphere is pretty laid-back. Behind the bar is a menagerie of offerings – Bowie stickers, figurines of the Queen, wooden carvings, plastic cobras, magnets from long-closed bars, hologram Jesuses. There’s a shelf full of snow globes, which all seem to be from tropical destinations. I eye them. What does a one-way plane ticket to Honolulu cost?
‘You probably should have said it with flowers,’ says Mica, then adds reflectively, ‘though it takes a lot of daisies to spell out, This might not be the right time but I don’t think we should see each other any more.’
‘Now you’re not helping on purpose,’ I say into the bar.
She puts her hands up. ‘I told you, I’m not supposed to be helping. It was a dick move.’
‘That’s what I heard,’ says another voice. The bar stool to my right squeaks as ninety kilos of furniture restorer sits down. I turn my head. Dan is looking unusually grim. Two decades on, and he still wears polo shirts with the collar up. He was a real trend-setter in our Year Five class.
‘Ellie got a phone call,’ he says.
‘My theory,’ says Mica, ‘is that Tom is having a quarter-life crisis.’
‘He’s twenty-nine. He’s too old for a quarter-life crisis,’ says Dan, ordering a mineral water.
‘Not if he lives until he’s eighty.’
‘One hundred and sixteen,’ I say. ‘You’re so bad at maths.’
‘And yet I survive,’ says Mica. ‘Hey, what were they serving for finger food at the gallery? Maybe you had an allergic reaction and went temporarily insane.’ She pushes her packet of chips past my nose to Dan, who looks furtively around before taking one. Dan is not fat. He has the body of a man who has spent years hauling around slabs of wood and making them into tables and mantelpieces. He could easily bench press me. The issue is Dan’s wife, Ellie, who believes that snacking is time that could be spent doing something useful. Ellie is very big on industriousness. It’s one of the reasons she adores Dan and his ability to work for eighteen hours in a row. Ellie also introduced me to June, and has been kicking herself ever since.
‘So what happened?’ says Dan.
I reluctantly sit up. ‘June went around telling everyone that I’m going back to portraiture. And she got me a card from an artists’ agency.’
They both stare at me.
‘And that’s why you broke it off?’ says Mica. ‘Are you kidding me?’
‘She also said that IF was a waste of time and just creates pictures of dead babies.’
Mica downs the rest of her pint. ‘Fuck her.’
Dan dunks the lime slice in his water with a chunky forefinger. ‘She’s pretty upset. She didn’t know anything was wrong.’
‘I didn’t know anything was wrong either,’ I say. ‘Well, okay, no, I kind of did, but I couldn’t put my finger on it until Mica said it.’
‘Wait, what?’ says Mica. ‘What did I say?’
‘Always fine, remember? Always fine; never good, never great. You were right.’
‘And this is the revelation you had,’ says Mica disbelievingly. ‘This is the reason you jacked a three-year relationship.’
‘Two years and nine months,’ I say. ‘Anyway, I knew it wasn’t working.’
Dan reaches for more chips. ‘It was working as far as June was concerned.’
‘But one person thinking it’s working doesn’t mean it’s actually working,’ I say. ‘That’s fifty per cent of the people in the relationship being unhappy.’
‘You’re right, you are good at maths,’ says Mica in a tone of wonderment.
‘Shut up.’ I try to catch the barman’s eye to get a bag of salted cashews. He’s watching the black and white TV above the pool table, captivated by Morticia Addams.
‘Always fine is still pretty good,’ says Dan, through another mouthful of chips. ‘It’s better than sometimes okay or usually crap.’
‘But I don’t want good to be defined only by the absence of bad,’ I say. ‘I want actual good. I want great.’
Mica runs her finger down the edge of her glass and silently studies me.
‘Look, Ellie and I are pretty good, but no one’s always good, let alone great,’ says Dan. ‘There are just degrees. Sometimes you really want to kill each other, but that’s no reason to dump someone.’
‘Unless you actually do kill them,’ says Mica, eating a chip. ‘And then I guess you’re just dumping the body.’
‘You work through the bad stuff,’ continues Dan, ‘and get back to pretty good.’
I drain my beer. ‘Christ, that’s depressing.’
‘It’s not depressing, it’s normal,’ he says.
‘I don’t want normal,’ I say as the bartender replaces my pint with another, plus a bag of cashews, finally.
‘Who would’ve guessed,’ says Mica. ‘How’s your baby, Dan?’ Mica can never remember children’s names.
‘Nearly five.’ Dan pulls his phone out and scrolls. ‘She can dress herself now.’
‘Just like her godfather.’ Mica shoots a look at me and takes the phone.
Rosie has inherited Dan’s dark brown eyes and Ellie’s corkscrew curls. She is inseparable from a stuffed wombat she calls ‘Dog’, which I gave to her for her first birthday. As godfather,
my plan is to start with the fluffy gifts then progress to the noisy ones. When she turns eight, she’ll get a drum kit.
It’s thanks to Dan that I hold this position. As far as Ellie’s concerned, I couldn’t be a godfather to a hockey stick. I’d like to think I’ve done justice to the job, despite expectations. At least, until the drum kit turns up.
‘What a cutie,’ says Mica, who has all the maternal longing of a fire hose. ‘By the way, were you supposed to meet your wife ten minutes ago somewhere?’
‘How –’ begins Dan until Mica shows him the text that’s just appeared on the screen. ‘Shit.’ He slides off the stool. ‘See you later. And please call June.’ He gives me a significant look – Dan the dad – and a smack on the back with his sledgehammer hand.
‘Have fun working through the bad stuff,’ calls Mica after him. She takes one of my cashews and thoughtfully watches him shoulder his way around the bar to the exit. ‘Have I met Ellie?’
‘Broccoli Neck,’ I say. ‘Drives a Jeep.’
‘Ah, that’s right.’ Mica looks conciliatory. ‘Have you ever done Dan an album? I could make him a replacement wife, one who won’t text him in all caps. I think he’d like that.’
‘I don’t want to talk about work.’ I rest my eye sockets on my palms.
‘Sure, let’s go back over how you humiliated your girlfriend in public and potentially ruined someone’s exhibition opening.’
‘Jesus.’
‘He’s busy.’ Mica snaffles more cashews. ‘I checked.’
My lungs have been replaced by party balloons. My breath whistles.
‘I thought you’d been training.’ My mother sounds annoyed, as if I’ve slacked on cardio just to piss her off. All I can see of her through the driving rain is a faint splotch of colour at the top of the stairs. Many, many stairs.
‘Late night,’ I wheeze.
‘Too many beers,’ she shoots back.
Mum and I train together once a week, mostly because Dad is too busy and Gen’s idea of exercise is reluctantly putting out the bins. Amity joined us once, but claimed after nine minutes that she’d pulled a calf muscle and then limped off to read a magazine in her car. I’m sure if Mum put out a call for running buddies on social media, she’d have fifty volunteers, but she won’t and so I’m the lucky guy who gets to sprint up flights of stairs today. At least we’re not doing agility drills, which always make me feel like I should be wearing a dog collar.
Technically this is the closest our family gets to physical bonding. The Lashes are not a touchy-feely unit. Gen and I have a long-standing joke that if we ever need to tell each other over the phone that we’re in danger, all we have to do is say, ‘I love you,’ and the other one will immediately call the police.
Mum bounces past me on the way down. She’s wearing a new outfit from an athletics company hoping for a shout-out on her channel. She looks like an ocular migraine.
I reach the top, try not to throw up, and start heading down again. The oval is deserted, because other people aren’t crazy. The pigeons huddle under the grandstand roof against the thudding downpour. I wish Amity and her car were here.
After several more rounds of sprints – during which I’m fairly sure one of my quad muscles detaches from the bone – Mum waits for me at the bottom. I stumble down the last few steps and have a whole second to recover before she says, ‘Try to keep up this time,’ and heads off up the stairs again.
I can’t be sure, exactly, but I think I’m being punished.
We sit on a bench under a perspex shelter, Mum cross-legged, me slumped against the back board. She holds her phone up for a selfie, making sure to get the label of her bottle into the shot. She checks the photo, takes three more, and then, satisfied, clicks the screen into black obedience.
‘I had a call from June,’ she says.
‘She’s working her way through the phone book. Next time I get a pizza, the delivery guy will say, “I also had a call from June”.’
‘Can you blame her?’
‘You don’t even know what happened.’
‘And I would love for you to tell me,’ she says.
I look at the white flagpoles spiked into the edge of the manicured green that falls away towards the road.
Mum sighs. ‘But you’re not going to tell me, because nobody tells me anything any more.’ Her face compresses, her mouth vacuum-packed.
‘I can’t really explain it.’
‘Let me guess. You were vaguely unhappy but didn’t try to work out why, so you bottled everything up to the point where tiny things were really getting to you, and then finally you found you couldn’t take it any more so you decided to drop a bomb on someone who had no idea it was coming.’
The flags move feebly in the rain, wrapping themselves around the metal.
‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ Mum says, leaning forward to look at me.
‘How did you know?’
‘Because I’m married to your father.’ She tucks her phone into her hand. ‘Don’t make that face at me.’ She gets up and puts her heel on the bench to stretch. ‘Also, isn’t this the fourth girl you’ve done this to?’
‘The others were more like mutual agreements.’
‘Remember Helena?’ Mum swaps legs. ‘Remember Isabelle?’
‘Oh. Right.’ I have clearly repressed more than I thought. This was the first one I’d done in public, though. Great, I’m devolving.
‘Maybe you could try and be more open,’ she says. ‘Just a thought. You don’t always have to be the observer. Try talking to people. Start with your family.’
‘Yay, chats. I love chats.’
‘You know, I really don’t need to deal with two teenagers at the moment. One is more than enough.’
‘And how is Gen?’
‘Forty-nine kilograms of hormones. I’d try for a refund but your father’s never home.’
‘He’s working, she’s a kid. It’s not their fault.’
‘The Lash family motto: It’s Not My Fault.’ Mum shoves her phone back into her armband and hands me her bottle. ‘Here.’
I take a swig and recoil.
‘It’s coconut water,’ she says.
‘Sure it isn’t embalming fluid?’
‘Very good for electrolyte rebalance.’ She screws the lid back on.
Definitely being punished.
By the time we make it back to the house, I can barely walk. Rohan may have to carry me up and down the basement stairs tomorrow. He can count it as leg day.
Both Dad and Gen are sequestered in their rooms, respectively blasting opera and Led Zeppelin. I gave Gen Houses of the Holy years ago and feel inordinately proud that she likes it enough to torture our parents with it.
‘Isn’t this peaceful?’ shouts Mum over the mashup. ‘So relaxing.’
I head for the bathroom and let the shower drown out the noise. I put my face under the water, feeling the jets drill into my eyelids, distracting me from the pain in my legs. The jogging brunette from IF’s photo board comes to mind. She’d do stair runs with a smile, sneakers springing, ponytail swinging. I imagine her showering afterwards, which also distracts me from the pain in my legs.
There’s silence from the rest of the house as I dry myself off. It’s entirely possible that Mum has cut both sets of speaker cables.
Mum is in the kitchen doing pranic breathing. She holds her hand up to me with a shake of her head. I do an about-face and go visit Dad in his office instead. He’s buried in paperwork. I discovered early on that Dad has the world’s most boring library: Guide to Analytical Sedimentology, Soil Ecology and Acidity, The Big Book of Stratigraphy, Soil, Soil, Soil! (Okay, the last two don’t exist but you get the idea.) His photos, though, are another story. Striated layers of rock and soil, black dunes, ripple formations, peaks and troughs. Symmetrical, accidental, textural perfection. Sometimes I would sneak in as a kid just to sit and stare at them.
Next to the window, crushing a pot plant into submission, is Dad’s cat, Wheezer. Wh
eezer opens one eye as I come in. It’s rare he’s out in full view; he usually prefers to cram his giant ginger ass into the bookshelf next to the dictionaries where he thinks no one can see him. Wheezer and I have a relationship of sorts: I don’t try to pat him . . . and that’s pretty much it.
‘Heard from June?’ says Dad.
‘What, she didn’t call you?’ This is starting to feel like an orchestrated campaign.
‘She’s a nice girl.’
‘Yes. I know.’
There’s a silence, short and perplexed.
Dad pointlessly moves a pile of papers from one side of the desk to the other. ‘I try to stay out of this kind of thing. You can probably understand why. But it wasn’t your finest moment. Embarrassing for her, I would have thought.’
He’s never comfortable talking about emotions; watching him navigate this particular terrain would be more entertaining if he wasn’t talking about me. ‘I just don’t want that kind of relationship.’
‘What kind is that?’
‘Where the only reason you don’t break up with someone is because nothing they do is bad enough to warrant it. You just keep justifying it. They’re moody but they always give you the last bite of their dessert. They never stop talking but they haven’t shot anyone. So you never break up, and the next thing you’re married and just kind of tolerating each other because you’re supposed to. Then it’s an inevitable slide into fog, where it’s all meatloaf and sex every third Tuesday and quiet resentment until you die.’
Dad runs his hand through his hair – thick salt and pepper that I secretly wish for. ‘You think that’s what marriage is like?’
‘I just want to always be happy when I see that person.’
‘That’s putting a hell of a lot on the other person.’ He gets up and shelves a text into the physics section. I can still see the scar on his calf where I accidentally hooked him with a fishing line once. He was very good about it. ‘There’s a whole lot between always happy and fog and meatloaf.’
‘And sex on Tuesdays.’
‘Sometimes Wednesdays,’ agrees Dad. ‘But being comfortable with someone doesn’t mean it’s boring. You can sit with that person and just . . .’ He conducts the air momentarily. ‘. . . be yourself. It’s pretty special to find someone who doesn’t try to change you or fix you.’
